Patssi Valdez is best known for her paintings and early performance work with the avant-garde art group ASCO. She received her BFA from Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles and was named outstanding alumni in the 1980s. In 2013 Valdez was invited to serve Regents' Lecturer at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2005, she was named the “Latina of Excellence in the Cultural Arts” by the U.S. Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

Valdez is a founding member of the avant-garde art group ASCO, which was recognized with a traveling retrospective, ASCO: Elite of the Obscure at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2011. It then traveled to Williams College in Boston, MA and MUAC in Mexico City.

In 2013 Valdez was invited to teach a paper workshop at MUAC in Mexico City. This fall she will be traveling to the Nottingham Museum in Nottingham, England where she will be collaborating with fashion students on a paper fashion show and installation at the Museum.

She is the recipient of many prestigious awards, including the J. Paul Getty Trust Fund for the Visual Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, the Brody Arts Fellowship in Visual Arts and the Alma Awards. Her art work is in several major collections, including the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.; The Tucson Museum of Art, Tucson, AZ; The San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA; the El Paso Museum of Art, El Paso, TX; Williams College Museum of Art, Boston,MA.; and the Sheldon Museum of Art, Lincoln, NE. Valdez's art has been featured at the Latin Grammies.